Talent Pools: What You Need to Know

Talent pools are virtual communities of passive job seekers stored in a database which allow HR teams to pipeline future employees. Wikipedia provides a longer definition, but the idea is that talent pools allow the employer to build communities filled with candidates who are interested in working there in the future. It provides you with the ability to engage passive candidates frequently and to tap into this reserve whenever you need to streamline any hiring process.

Value Added

Talent pools help both the job seeker and employer. As a job seeker, I might not be ready to apply yet. Maybe I'm a student, not in the job market, or don't have a resume yet, but I'm interested in your company and could potentially apply in the future. By joining a talent community, I can learn about future positions instead of having to google your company every month. In fact, Forbes calls them one of the little-known ways to find about hidden jobs!

An active talent community will also share relevant news about the company that I might find interesting. "Company X just won an award for Top 20 companies to work for in 2018" or "recap of Company X's day out at the Spartan Race" are stories that reveal information about the company, their employee value proposition, and engage potential candidates. Using the content I receive from talent pools, I can decide whether I would truly be a good fit with the firm.

From HR's perspective, right off the bat I save time and money. Through talent communities, I already have a warm pipeline of interested talent that I have been engaging through email nurture campaigns. A simple survey after joining will also allow the recruiting team to understand and track their skills and interests. We can quickly filter out candidates using their skills for a certain open position.

With an efficient talent pool, recruiting will depend less on external job boards and more on an inbound recruiting strategy. From the HR's point of view, would I rather hire someone who has showed interest in the company for months to years or someone who found the posting on a job board and dropped off a resume? This comes down to perhaps the most important benefit of talent pipelining, making the "right hire." Through active management of the communities, I am also developing my employee value proposition and sharing company culture. A member of the community will have a better understanding of the work environment, which often translates to smoother transition, better attitude, and more engagement post hire.

Talent Pools Best Practices

1. Keep it active In many cases, companies sit on pools with tons of potential candidates and do nothing. KEEP IT ACTIVE, and DO NOT JUST JOB BLAST. Let the talent learn more about your company. Send out weekly or monthly update emails with new positions, company updates, or other interesting things that boost your employee value proposition. At NextWave, our Talent Community product automatically sends segmented monthly emails to candidates.

2. Organize and segment Chances are you have talent pools filled with people looking for different jobs. You do not want to send everyone the same material. If you run a software company that's hiring both sales staff and software developers, sending the latter about sales techniques is counterproductive and it shows the lack of effort. Make sure each major demographic in the pools is organized and getting relevant content.

3. Effortless Make sure the process of signing up is easy. Remember, a lot of these candidates are passive; having a complicated sign up process will deter them. For instance, have a simple form on the bottom of the webpage asking for a name, email address, and maybe interest, and avoid having to upload a full resume. Keep it simple

4. Automate it, save you time. Lastly, for your own good, it is highly recommended to have this automated. A tool that requires a lot of manual work won't be used to its full potential. Tools like NextWave can be a big help in making sure keeping your talent pipeline engaged isn't another thing on your to-do list.

Companies with talent communities see lower cost per hire, and decreased time to fill. The ROI can be quite large, and so most modern talent acquisition teams are adopting some sort of talent pool strategy.

If you're looking to develop talent pools or strengthen your career site, you should check out the NextWave Hire product, we'd love to help you out.